The tenth addition of Friday Focus is finally here (whew, what a milestone!). Enough talk and more focus!

Sites of the Week

First and foremost this week is Digg. Earlier this week the internet’s favorite vote-for-news portal got a significant face lift and looks a hell lot better. My favorite is how the navigation “stacks” upon itself. It’s pretty sweet.

Next is artypapers. The design is extremely simple and calming, something you need during the holiday season. I love the pastel like color scheme as well.

Finally there is welkam, a company that designs and builds exhibitions in Japan and the US. I liked the flow of the site and I felt it got the message of what they do across very effectively.

Digg Weekly

Design: 50 Beautiful CSS-Based designs of ’06
A list of 50 top css designs rated by Smashing Magazine. Sites are broken down into different categories. And what do you know, the list even features someone familiar!

Programming: How to test HTML emails
If you’ve ever wanted to design a newsletter, you know it can be a complete pain in the ass because every mail client is different. This fresh article from Campaign Monitor explains ways to test html emails before sending out those mass emails.

Application of the Week

CSS Submit is a recently launched application that, for a buck, will submit your site to dozens of css galleries automatically, with you only needing to enter in information once. If traffics what you’re looking for as well as recognition, or if you’re simple too lazy busy to submit your url to multiple sites yourself, give this a try.

Our buddy Paul is running a holiday contest where the winner will receive a years worth of hosting from Mediatemple on their new (gs) servers. There isn’t much time to enter, as the contest ends on Christmas Eve, December 24th. The requirements are fairly simple, all you have to do is subscribe to his feed and leave some insight on your favorite article from his blog during the past year. Be sure to give it an enter, it could make for a nice Christmas present!

This past year was a long one for us, and we went threw many changes a long the way. As we near the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, we reflect on how Devlounge started and got to the point we’re at today, as well as what you can expect from us in the future. Not only that, but we also want your thoughts on how we can improve Devlounge in the upcoming year.

The beginning

It was almost a year ago when Prash first came to me with the need to start a new project. We contemplated for a while what field we should try to enter, and thought about various options for different projects we had in mind. In the end we settled on building a designer and developer resource filled with a collection of articles and interviews written in-house and by guest contributors.

It was in January that we purchased the domain you’ve all come to know as devlounge.net. With a “coming soon” splash and newsletter signup form up for a few months (very web 2.0ish) we worked on the first Devlounge release, which officially went live in April 2006.

Our very first article was a guest contributed article by Paul Stamatiou on April 3rd. The article was a modification of one of his own previously published on his blog, but it provided the spark that would lead to an overall very successful year in Devlounge land.

The Year

In the six months we’ve been around, we expanded fairly rapidly and built up a strong collection of articles. I can’t thank my staff team enough, which, only about a month ago, went through a significant revamp adding some talented individuals who are sure to provide some great articles in the year to come.

We also went through 3 different redesigns in the short 6 month period, and many of the changes came fairly quickly. Only a month after Devlounge 1 was released, an updated version hit screens everywhere, eventually giving way to the design you see here now which took over in September / October. Work is never done though, as I’ve been tweaking things here and there week in and week out, hoping to improve usability and organization with every change / update.

But it wasn’t just about giving you something to read, but also giving you something to play with. Over 2006 we released a total of 3 WordPress themes; Prebuilt, Wave, and Iceburgg, all of which can be picked up here. Staff members also did their share, which Ronalfy releasing Custom Reading Width, a unique script that you’ll only find here.

The Year Ahead

We have a lot of plans for 2007, but much of it depends upon you, the readers. We want to know what you want to see more of, less of, and just general things we can do to make Devlounge a better place. Please leave your thoughts in the comments are reading this article, because all your feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Some of the things we already have planned:

More Interviews – While our articles database grew fairly well, we really lacked in the interviews category. We really plan on stepping this up in 2007, so designers beware – you could be getting interview invites in your inbox from us. We already have a few planned for the first few months of ’07, and we’ll try to get as many as we can out each month throughout the year.

More Code Related Topics – We also intend to find a few more staff members to up the contributions to the code related topics such as php, ruby on rails, and javascript. We’ll try to have this straightened out within the next month so we can really expand our article coverage in 2007.

Contests that Work – Believe it or not, we did a few contests this past year, but with not much no success. That will all change in ’07. We’ll start with small scale prices that have high values, such as advertising here on Devlounge, Mint licenses, flickr pro accounts, etc, and than hopefully we’ll expand to much more valuable prize packs. If you have any ideas about what kind of contests you’d like to see, let us know below.

More for the community – And as always, you can expect an array of new articles and community givebacks, including more wordpress themes, psds, fonts, etc.

Now it’s your turn

Leave your feedback below. It really helps!

I recently came across a forum post asking the question, “What’s the worst website of 2006?”

An interesting follow-on post was written that discussed the number of links in the example website given in the post (When it comes to links, less is more).

So I ask the Devlounge readers this question: what is your personal favorite for worst website of the year?

Gamma Computers is looking for a site redesign to bring their site up to par with the products they sell.

Site Url: www.gamma.co.nz

Description from employer: Our current website is located @ www.gamma.co.nz & we’re looking to start from scratch / majorly revamp it for the new year.

We basically just need a design which we can then ourselves implement. So we’re just after an entire working layout really.

Contact Joe for more information.

There are a lot of things we do without understanding them. Upon watching one of my favorite movie series this past weekend in Back to the Future, I realized a lot could be attributed to the knowledge of both the past, present, and future.

Synapses

Before understanding the spiel I’m about to go on, you first have to know what I’m taking about by comparing things to Back to the Future (I’ll abbreviate it B2TF throughout the rest of the article).

Back to the Future is a movie that was first released in 1985, and it followed the story of a teenager (Marty) and a scientist (Doc Brown) who invented a time machine using a car to travel back and forward in time. The series, which spanned across 3 films, brought them back in time, then to the future, back in time again, and finally back in time one more time before returning to the “present day”.

With every time they went back in time, their actions would greatly effect the outcome of events that would happen in the future. For example, the character Marty almost prevents his parents from meeting when he goes back in time, which would mean if he returned to the “present”, he wouldn’t exist.

Applying this to the web

So where does all this fit into in terms of design and development. Devlounge, along with many others, write articles suggesting that you to do things a certain way, like use xhtml instead of tables, or not blog about certain things, etc and etc. But you can not simply read articles and expect that if you make changes you will be caught up with what is the “standard” way to do things today. You have to understand why we do things a certain way, and why things have changed – not just in the past 15 years but the last year itself.

You first have to understand that things require thought. Unless you are some living-the-high-life celebrity, going out and getting married for just a few hours with some person you met only hours before is not the most practical and smartest of decisions. Just because we tell you to use divs and css instead of tables doesn’t mean that you should. You have to analyze the differences so you understand why what was once the “right way” no longer is.

Better accessibility, improved cross-browser compatibility, easier to understand code, faster loading times. Just a few advantages over using tables. So why then were shitty tables used in the first place? In the time when tables were the only solutions, browsers lacked advanced css support, and the list of alternative browsers to Internet Explorer was very limited. So, everyone used tables, no matter how complex the site was, and even if the developer understood the powers of css, simply because there wasn’t enough support for it across the net as a whole. Once support started becoming available, people started putting it to use, eventually leading to where we are today.

Actions also play a big part of the direction the web takes, just like they did in B2TF. Without knowledgeable, push-the-limit pioneers who tackled css and divs head on and built better browsers, tables might still have been the best practice for coding.

Some people remain stuck in the past, and refuse to accept the fact that times have changed. In a recent Q&A with Mr. Bill Gates himself, Molly Holzschlag asked him questions related to Microsoft’s commitment (or lack thereof) to web standards, and Gates continued to try and reiterate the fact that Microsoft helped implement the web all along and provided the basis for what people would eventually build off of. But the fact that Microsoft had the opportunity to put themselves ahead of the curve but simply let it pass and go ignored proved that they were not attempting to stay up to date, but would rather stay trapped in the past.

So next time you go to use Ajax to flip between pages of a site, don’t just do it because its the “modern” way of changing pages, but make sure you have an understanding at why its a good solution, and why it was never used before. Or when you are designing a site for your most recent client, don’t simply use gradients and big fonts just because they’re popular, but have a deeper understanding to exactly why it’s so popular today compared to 5 years ago.

Sometimes it’s best to use your own time machine – logic – to look at the past and compare it to the present, and imagine just how things will evolve in the next 5 years.

This is my entry for the WLTC Blogging Essay Competition. Please help me out and rate my entry.

When writing for a blog, there are what seems an endless amount of topics to choose from. Bloggers write about design, cars, blogging, technology, gadgets, and more. However, there comes a time when bloggers are running on empty and can’t decide what to write about. During those lull-in-blogging moments, certain bloggers may be tempted to write about topics as useless as making a grilled-cheese sandwich.

Throughout my limited exposure in the blogging world, I have come across topics that seem as taboo as yelling “bomb” in a movie theater. Within this essay, I will discuss the topics that bloggers should avoid writing about at all costs. These topics consist of cats, lack of blogging, commenting, future in-laws, and a day-to-day micro-view of life.

Nobody Cares About My Stupid Cat

If you’ve been reading blogs for a while, one of the topics that repeatedly gets on people’s nerves is that of cats. In fact, it’s a running joke among some bloggers.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some good uses of cat topics. For example, why not talk about how when the cat decided to lick the 9-volt battery you left around? Alternatively, why not discuss how to make that favorite Chinese cuisine? For the PETA folks, I’m not suggesting that someone write about being cruel to a cat. I’m only suggesting that those topics would be the only way to make a cat post entertaining.

Just for the record, I own a black cat. She’s so cute. Every morning when I wake up, she’s right there lying next to me and it’s so — err, nevermind.

I’m Too Busy To Blog. So What?

Imagine calling someone and going straight to voicemail. Now imagine this voicemail saying, “I’m sorry I can’t come to the phone. In fact, I’m too busy right now to even call anybody. If you leave a voicemail, I might get back to you if I’m not busy enough. I’ll try to keep this to a minimum. Thanks! Bye.”

By the time you’ve reached the end of the voicemail, you’re probably thinking, “Why not just say, ‘Leave a message’?”

There’s no real point to those “I can’t blog ’cause I’m too busy” posts other than giving a cop-out for not keeping up with your blog. People come to your blog to read your content, not your excuses for not producing your content. There are millions of other blogs out there. If yours goes straight to voicemail, the reader will just call someone else.

If you’re too busy to blog, do something about it. ProBlogger has some great advise on what to do if you foresee yourself being too busy.

Nobody Is Commenting! Poor Me.

Imagine calling that same person’s phone and hearing, “Thank you for calling. Don’t hang up! Please leave a voicemail. Please? If you don’t leave a voicemail, I’ll never know why you called. C’mon, please leave that voicemail.”

Does the above voicemail scream of desperation? I certainly think so.

Blogging about people not commenting — or begging people to comment — is nothing short of saying to your readers that you need attention.

I understand the need for comments. Comments reinforce the writing and add to the content. Comments motivate the blogger to post more. However, complaining about having no comments is not going to persuade people to comment. If a reader wants to comment on a post, then that reader will leave a comment. Forcing or persuading someone to comment will rarely help the situation.

Once again, ProBlogger offers some great tips on how to get readers to comment more. Suspiciously absent from the tips is the one about complaining about lack of comments. Maybe the guys at ProBlogger know something I don’t know?

I Hate My Future In-Laws

There are some things people forget when writing blog posts: people might actually read them. Airing your dirty laundry is good in some situations, and disastrous in others.

When writing that negative topic about those closest to you, think about the potential ramifications if that person (or a friend of that person) reads the post. If you happen to blog about hating your future in-laws and they read it, think about how quickly your fiancé (or fiancée) will call off the wedding.

Chances are, if you write about those dear to you, then there’s people you know personally that read your blog. People love to gossip, and there will be nothing to stop them from passing along some “useful” information to those you’ve written about. I’ve seen it happen a lot of times, especially on those infamous MySpace blogs.

When airing your dirty laundry, do the newspaper test. If your blog entry showed up on the front page of every newspaper, would you be okay with it?

My Hourly Diary

There are some blogs out there that can be potential cures for insomniacs. In fact, some blogs should have a warning that says, “Do not operate heavy machinery after reading some of my blog posts.”

The blogs I speak of are the diary-type blogs where the blogger goes into near microscopic detail of the person’s life. You’ve seen them. Hopefully you abandoned the blog before any long-term damage took place.

These diary-type blogs are okay, but sometimes there is simply too much detail. Imagine reading a daily post such as this:

“I woke up this morning. My cat wouldn’t stop meowing. I put on some pants and went to the restroom. Felt better. I brushed my teeth. I need new toothpaste. Have to go to work. Nobody’s commenting on my blog. I wonder why? Will write more later. Bye.”

I can imagine this comment on a post like that, “I woke up too! Sweet! We have something in common.”

I hope that you’ve gathered that there is a point when you give your readers too much information.

Conclusion

Blogging is a great way to get your thoughts out. Blogging is also great for providing information, critiquing, and starting online friendships.

However, there are some topics that should be avoided at all costs. For one, nobody really cares about your cat. People could care less about you being too busy, or the lack of comments on your blog. Also, airing dirty laundry about those closest to you is rarely a good thing. The last thing mentioned was giving readers too much information regarding your personal life.

Please choose carefully what you blog about. The sanity of your readers is at stake.

This is my entry for the WLTC Blogging Essay Competition. Please help me out and rate my entry.

The queries have been updated for WordPress 2.1.

I’ve been working on my archives page on my personal blog for some time now, and I thought I’d share some custom MySQL queries in order to allow for some custom archives tweaking in your WordPress blog. I have three pages set up, with one showing dates, one showing categories, and one showing all of the entries. All three code snippets require a custom WordPress page, which is outside the scope of this article.

An additional query has been added that shows all of the categories, but has all the posts within that category shown as well.

Showing the Dates

I wanted to have a page that listed all of the dates on my blog. However, I also wanted the number of posts to be included in the link. This cannot be achieved using the standard get_archives template tag from the WordPress Codex. A custom query was needed. Shown below is the code I used followed by a brief description.

<ul class="archive-list">
							<?php
$months = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT DISTINCT MONTH( post_date ) AS month , YEAR( post_date ) AS year, COUNT( id ) as post_count FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' and post_date <= now( ) and post_type = 'post' GROUP BY month , year ORDER BY post_date DESC");
foreach($months as $month) : ?>
<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('url') ?>/<?php echo $month->year; ?>/<?php echo date("m", mktime(0, 0, 0, $month->month, 1, $month->year)) ?>"><?php echo date("F", mktime(0, 0, 0, $month->month, 1, $month->year)) ?> <?php echo $month->year ?> - <span class="archive-list-small"><?php echo $month->post_count; if ($month->post_count > 1 ) { echo " posts"; } else { echo " post"; }?></span></a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
							</ul>

The query grabs the month and year from a post’s date. The query then groups the results by month and year, and counts the number of ID matches for that time period.

After the query has been run, I embed the post count inside the link for the date. If you plan on using the above snippet, you may need to change a few things depending on how your permalink structure is setup. You can see the result in the screenshot below:

Showing the Categories

The next thing I wanted to have on my archives page was a page showing the categories I wanted with the number of posts embedded within the link (much like the dates example above). Shown below is the code I used followed by a brief description.

<ul class="archive-list">
 						<?php
						$query = "SELECT cat_ID, cat_name, category_count, category_nicename FROM $wpdb->categories WHERE cat_ID NOT IN ( 10, 1, 22, 23 ) AND category_parent =0 ORDER BY cat_name ASC";
						if ( $cats = $wpdb->get_results($query) ) {
						foreach ($cats as $cat) {
						?>
							<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('url') ?>/category/<?php echo $cat->category_nicename; ?>/"><?php echo $cat->cat_name; ?> - <span class="archive-list-small"><?php echo $cat->category_count; ?> posts</span></a></li>
							<?php
							}
						} ?>
						</ul>

The query grabs all the parent categories and excludes certain ones by the category ID number. Once again, you may need to change the link structure to match your permalink structure. Shown below is a screenshot of the result:

Showing All Entries

I wanted an archive page to display every entry in my blog, but I wanted a little more control than what wp_get_archives('type=postbypost') gave me. Shown below is the code I used to retrieve all of my entries:

<ul class="archive-list">
 						<?php
						$query = "SELECT post_title, MONTH( post_date ) AS month ,  YEAR( post_date ) AS year, DAY( post_date ) AS day , id FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_date <= now( ) and post_type = 'post' ORDER BY post_date DESC";
						if ( $posts = $wpdb->get_results($query) ) {
						foreach ($posts as $post) {

						?>
						<li><a href="<?php echo get_permalink($post->id)?>"><?php echo $post->post_title ?> - <span class="archive-list-small"><?php echo date("F jS, Y",mktime(0, 0, 0, $post->month, $post->day, $post->year)) ?></span></a></li>
						<?php
						}
						}
						?>
  </ul>

The query grabs all posts (including the date) and orders them by the post date. I wanted to embed the date within the link so that people would know when I posted a particular entry. Shown below is a screenshot of the result:

Showing Categories and Posts

One of our readers requested a query that allowed the display of categories, but also the posts within that category. We at Devlounge try to serve are readers as much as possible, so I have some up with a solution. Shown below is the code.

		<?php
						$query = "select c.cat_ID, c.cat_name, c.category_nicename, c.category_count, p.ID, p.post_title, p.post_date, MONTH( p.post_date ) AS month ,  YEAR( p.post_date ) AS year, DAY( p.post_date ) AS day from $wpdb->post2cat pc, $wpdb->categories c, $wpdb->posts p where  c.cat_ID NOT IN (1) and c.category_parent = 0 and pc.category_id = c.cat_ID and pc.post_id = p.ID and p.post_status = 'publish' AND p.post_date <= now( ) order by c.cat_name asc, p.post_date desc";
						$oldCat = "";
						$currentCat = "";
						if ( $cat_posts = $wpdb->get_results($query) ) {
						foreach ($cat_posts as $cat_post) {
							$currentCat = $cat_post->category_nicename;
							if ($currentCat != $oldCat && $oldCat != "") { echo "</ul>"; }
							if ($currentCat != $oldCat) {
							?>
							<h4><a href="<?php bloginfo('url') ?>/category/<?php echo $cat_post->category_nicename; ?>/"><?php echo $cat_post->cat_name; ?> - <span class="archive-list-small"><?php echo $cat_post->category_count; ?> posts</span></a></h4>
							<ul>
							<?php
							} ?>
							<li><a href="<?php echo get_permalink($cat_post->ID)?>"><?php echo $cat_post->post_title ?> - <span class="archive-list-small"><?php echo date("F jS, Y",mktime(0, 0, 0, $cat_post->month, $cat_post->day, $cat_post->year)) ?></span></a></li>
							<?php
							$oldCat = $cat_post->category_nicename;
							}	//end foreach
						}	

						?>
						</ul>

The query grabs all categories and posts. The code then displays the category in an H4 tag and lists all of the posts the category contains beneath it. As the reader requested, the posts are organized by date. Below is an “un-styled” screenshot of the result:

There are two things to note about this query. The “c.cat_ID NOT IN (1, 2, etc...)” can be taken out of the query if there aren’t any category IDs to exclude. The “c.category_parent = 0” can also be taken out if you wish to show all categories and not just parent categories.

Hopefully you can use the above queries as a launching pad for your own WordPress archives page. If you need any assistance, please leave a comment.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been making more and more updates here and there, focusing on fixing up different pages each week to tighten up various elements on the site. (Yes, it never stops). During this past week the podcasts page (which still remains) was replaced with a notes page in the nav bar, and the notes now leads you to an entire page dedicated to sidenotes. All we have left on that page is to add pagination so you can browse through all the previous notes and not just the last five.

We’ve done a lot of other things here and there as well, including removing the stupid text asking for a flash design that was located under “Featured” on the homepage for months. This weekend we’ll work on getting the “This Month at Devlounge” section squared away, and we should be good. Also this past week we had a chance to cleanup the extras page, which looks a lot better now and will give us room to expand when we offer more and more exclusives throughout 2007.

In other news, WordPress.com today announced that Iceburgg was now available for use on all their hosted blogs, and in only about 8 hours they’ve gotten over 75 comments with mostly positive feedback. (If only those 75 comments were here.) We welcome all WordPress.com bloggers to visit Devlounge frequently and let us know what you think of our themes so they can be improved in the future.

Finally, we’d like to wish our Jewish readers a Happy Hanukkah!

Take care everyone!
Team Devlounge

Let’s get right into it with out ninth edition of Friday Focus.

Sites of the Week

This week was about site redesigns, and two great ones in my mind are WordPress and Microsoft. The new WordPress.com design is very neat and clean, and a real step up from their last effort. I think the WordPress team did a kickass job on the new design.

Another design that was recently refreshed is the Microsoft homepage. It looks equally as good as the wordpress redesign, except I tend to be a WordPress favorite a little more since they build some wonderful free products.

Finally, there’s Dale Harris’ portfolio. I’ve loved this design since I first saw it in the middle of the summer, and there is now portfolio work there being displayed and it just goes perfectly with the grunge-style design. Paint splatters and all, I love it.

Digg Weekly

Design: Let Google Create Your Rounded Corners
Another rounded corners article, this time using google to create the images neccesary to create the corners. Everything else hot this week was about Photoshop CS3, but we have our own review about that.

Programming: 11 Tips for Time Management in Web World
A guide to managing your time better in the “Web Working World”. Nice little article.

Weekly Must-Haves

This week we had two things cross our radar that we think you should check out if you haven’t already. The first is the release of the Photoshop CS3 Beta, and the second is the updated version (3.0) of Steve Smith’s WordPress Tiger Admin (we’re using it and it looks great). Pick both up today!

The first Photoshop CS3 beta was recently released to the public, and we wasted no time jumping in to see what was new with this release and just how things are coming along. Within 10 minutes of learning about the release I had it downloaded, and it was time to begin the installation process and get this rolling.

Install

Before installing you are first required to extract the files to a temp folder first. Once the extraction finishes (less than 5 minutes), you are then presented with the installation screen with a glistening blue hue that has a very lot of “Vista” feel to it.

The Installation process itself takes about 10-15 minutes. The installer is broken down into multiple parts, starting from the System Check (make sure you don’t have any other programs open during install because you’ll have to quit the installer to exit them before it lets you install) all the way to the second to last step when it actually installs. The Options screen lets you add or remove various components before install, and there are a lot of them.

First Launch

When you launch the product for the first time, you’re asked to enter in a serial, which can be obtained from Adobe for free if you enter your CS2 serial on the Photoshop 3 beta site, or “Try Photoshop for 30 Days”, which is supposedly only two days. Adobe has taken the time to blacklist all the cracked serial numbers generated from some of the best Photoshop CS2 keygens, so don’t think it will be a walk in the park if you do not have a real, valid copy of CS2.

Updated Interface

The interface has been updated and now sports rounded windows which can be expanded and collapsed, along with, whatelse, closed. Windows are organized a lot more, and some toolbar tools have been updated and changed slightly, but not too much.

Improved Performance

CS3 seemed to perform tasks much quicker than CS2, which was really nice to see, especially since it’s only at beta stage at the moment. I was able to work with large images and create some large files without much effort and little slowdown. Always good to see.

Various New Features

Using the Workspace dropdown you can select “What’s New in CS3″, which will highlight all the new features over CS2 in blue in the menus. Some of the new features we noticed: A check in feature for keeping track of who and when PSD’s were last updated, a new “Device Central”, Open as Smart Object, a new Animation window (no more need for Imageready), and various updates / additions to Adjustment layers.

New and Updated Tools

With CS3 also comes updated versions of Adobe Stock Photos and Adobe Bridge, as well as the introduction of a Device Manager, which allows you to preview and manage your devices, as well as save files for a specific device, for example, mobile phone or PDA. The device manager looks pretty cool, and gives you an example of what an image would look like in a particular device.

Bridge also sports a new interface, but it is very hardware demanding. If your computer is a few years old, don’t expect Bridge to run. I received warnings that I did not have enough ram (512MB recommended) and a fast enough processor, and as soon as I made it onto Bridge it crashed, so I wasn’t able to play around with it as much as I would have liked to.

Progress

Overall, for the first beta, CS3 is on the right track. I like the new features and I expect they’ll be even more before the final release, schedule for the spring of ’07. The performance improvements of this release is what I really liked, because not having a super high tech powerhouse computer I was still able to get things done quickly, and that’s something I definitely liked.

Try it for yourself

You can download CS3 and give it a try for yourself today. What do you think of the release so far?

Adobe has released a brand new beta of Photoshop CS3, the next in line in the Photoshop family. You can grab it here (Note: Requires login to Adobe). I’ll put together a review in the next day or two after I’ve had a chance to play around with it.

Another important note: To use the beta longer than two days you’ll need to have a licensed version of Photoshop currently installed on your computer. See the download site for more information.